Hire One of Our Top-Notch Graduate Students
The graduate students in the Political Science program at the University of Tennessee are well versed in the most pressing issues confronting governments and societies around the world today. Their work has explored issues like the sustainability of democracy, interstate war, poverty and social change, nuclear proliferation, and voting rights. These are our current students, and they are on the market!
Meet Our Current Master’s Students
- Payton Corlew
- Noah Gillespie
- Zi Gu
- Olivia Hanners
- James Sayers
- Desmond Shmavonian
- Brooke Golden
Meet Our Current Doctoral Students
- Dana Abu Haltam
- Hannah Arning
- Erin Chafatelli
- Matthew Cooper
- Robert Dennis
- Orhan Dogan
- Caitlin Goff
- Kacper Grass
- Kurt Kuhlman
- Andrew Leonard
- Amy Lynch
- Rachel McGovern
- Jeremiah Muhammad
- Salimot Olawale
- Jennifer Shaneberger
- Olusegun Somide
- Isabel Swafford
- Xin Tong
- Katherine Trubee
- Seyma Tufan
- Calista Boyd
- Alexandra Rotzer
- Matt Jones
- Paul Keener
- George Fields
- Rachel Vincent
- Andrew Strait
- Amnah Ibraheem
Job Market Candidates
Jeremiah Muhammed
Major: American Politics (Black American Politics)
Minors: Comparative Politics, Research Methodology
Dissertation Title: Mobilizing in Crisis: Black American Political Action Amid Overlapping Crises
Jeremiah’s dissertation examines how overlapping crises—such as COVID-19, racial injustice, and restrictive voting laws—affect Black voter mobilization in Georgia. His research explores how acute and chronic crises interact to either galvanize or demobilize political engagement, providing insights into the sustainability of Black political participation amid systemic, chronic, and crisis-specific challenges. Aside from his dissertation, Jeremiah’s additional research investigates the impact of political endorsements and racial appeals on voter behavior, focusing on how explicit racial appeals and elite endorsements resonate with or alienate Black voters. His work examines the authenticity and strategic use of endorsements by high-profile political figures, aiming to understand the ways these appeals influence voter perception and engagement across racial groups. Broadening this focus, Jeremiah’s related research explores how celebrity endorsements affect Black voters, particularly how perceived authenticity, race, and the public persona of endorsers influence voter support. This research examines the differential effectiveness of endorsements from high-profile celebrities, political figures, and emerging influencers. Jeremiah also brings a decade of experience in environmental policy, research, and community advocacy, with a specialization in environmental justice. His work has focused on data-driven policy development, program management, and coalition-building to address systemic issues such as water justice and land use. Currently, as a Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois-Chicago, he supports flood mitigation efforts in Illinois, advances research on national and international water remunicipalization initiatives, and develops pricing strategies for recycled water within an affordability framework.
Jennifer Shaneberger
Major/minor: International Relations, Comparative Politics
Dissertation Title: When Political Rhetoric Threatens Migrant Labor Market Integration
With research at the intersection of political communication, public opinion, and migrant integration outcomes, Shaneberger uses mixed methods to show how anti-migrant political rhetoric impacts migrant labor market integration. The qualitative portion of her research was funded by a Fulbright Fellowship that allowed her to conduct interviews and ethnographic research in Sweden for ten months in association with Linkoping University’s Division of Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO).
Katherine Trubee
Major/minor: Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Research Methods (Qualitative, Quantitative, and Experimental)
Dissertation Title: Gender Inclusivity and Decision-Making in Collective Action Movements
Katherine’s research interests focus on the effects of gender on group dynamics and larger conflict processes. She has fieldwork experience in Southeast Asia and Oceania but is broadly inspired by and engaged in studying movements around the world. She prefers the empirical leverage of utilizing mixed methods to evaluate research puzzles such as ethnographic fieldwork, structured and unstructured interviews, archival research, regression analyses, and survey experiments. She primarily engages with theories of representation, social movements, civil war, and political psychology. Beyond her work on why groups select violence or nonviolence, she is interested in processes of repression, intervention, and the duration and outcome of movements.
Dana Abu-Haltam
Major: International Relations
My research focuses on international security, relations, and political economy, with an emphasis on how great power competition, particularly the U.S.-China rivalry, shapes the foreign policy behavior of countries in the MENA region. Specifically, I examine the effects of foreign aid, trade dependence, military leverage, regional threats, public opinion, and challenges related to stability and survival.
Additionally, I study China’s rise as a great power, particularly through its use of Chinese Strategic Partnerships (CSP). For this research, I collected original data on CSPs and applied time-series quantitative data analysis (using Stata) to explore the selection and effectiveness of China’s choice of partners.
My dissertation investigates the behavior of Middle Eastern and North African countries in response to U.S.-China competition, with case studies on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt, and Algeria. This research includes original interview data and text analysis.
